The Misery Machine - The Tragic Death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett | The Case of Lisa Montgomery

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

This week, Drewby and Yergy review the tragic death of an expectant young mother from Skidmore, Missouri, and the perpetrator, who on January 13th, 2021, became the first woman to have a death sentence carried out on a federal level in almost 70 years. Was justice served? A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://tinyurl.com/y2htphdt https://tinyurl.com/y53f4cch https://tinyurl.com/y29z2tdr https://tinyurl.com/y5ew85aq https://tinyurl.com/y6au5jdh https://tinyurl.com/y2ndmuuc https://tinyurl.com/y349fy9f  

Hi, with the Misery Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And look, it's Kighton. Again. And this week, given the recent events of what happens, we're doing a full episode on Lisa Montgomery, as well as what happened to Bobby Joe Stinnett. It's a very tragic case.

It's really, really sad. So if you are watching on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We just hit 3,400 subscribers. Yes. Thank you to everyone that's helped us so far. And if you want to support us, Kighton, geez. Oh, my goodness. And if you want to support us, the best way to do you.

do that is to hit like and subscribe. It helps us go a long way in the YouTube algorithm. So without further ado, the case of Lisa Montgomery. And the death of Bobby Joe Stinnett. Skidmore, Missouri doesn't have the population of a small town. Think about your last trip to Walmart or Target. With the latest estimate, to be about 250 residents, chances are that you ran into more people doing your groceries than you wouldn't all of Skidmore. Crime rates are technically low, but when violence struck the small town in the early aughts, it was exceptionally heinous and downright disturbing. Bobby Joe Stinnett was a shy but kind person and was very protective of her younger brother, Tyler.

She was a cheerleader throughout high school and graduated with honors in the year 2000. Skidmore was where she called home for her entire life. On April 26, 2003, she married her high school sweetheart, Zebulon Stinnett, who she often referred to as Zeb. She and her husband started a business breeding rat terriers out of their home. Bobby Joe loved animals. So where our story begins, she was eight months pregnant with her first child. Zeb and Bobby Joe were thrilled, and so they were in the process of saving up for a home of their own.

Bobby Joe was very active in an online rat terrier breeding community in chat room, including one called Ratter Chatter, which was an internet community exclusive to rat terrier enthusiasts. It was there that she was allegedly introduced to a woman named Darlene Fisher by a man named Jason Dawson, who also frequented the community and was very active in the rat terrier scene. Darlene was interested in purchasing a rat terrier, and Jason allegedly put the two parties in touch with one another. However, on the day of the transaction, December 16, 2004, it was not Darlene Fisher that showed up on Bobby Jocelyn its doorstep, but a 36-year-old woman by the name of Lisa Montgomery, who was already known to Bobby Joe from the rat terror community,

the two were both breeders and enthusiasts and had photos taken together at dog shows. Why would Lisa show up under the guise of someone else, especially when she ran her own kennel? Lisa Montgomery and Bobby Joe stinted men alone. Nobody truly knows what the exchange was between them, but what we do know is that Montgomery strangled this poor woman to death with a pink neon rope,

and proceeded to cut the premature infant from her womb. Stinnett was discovered in a pool of her own blood by her mother, Becky Harper, roughly an hour after she was killed. 9-1-1 was called immediately. Harper described the wounds inflicted upon her daughter as appearing as if her stomach had exploded. She was found clutching a stray blonde hair in her hands. Despite attempts to revive her,

Bobby Joe Stinnett was pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville. She had just turned 23 years old 12 days prior. It should be noted that Bobby Joe was not blonde, nor was anyone in her household, from my understanding, but Lisa Montgomery is blonde. So amazingly, Bobby Joe's baby, whom she planned to name Victoria, survived. At around 5.15 p.m., Kevin Montgomery, Lisa's husband, received a call from Lisa saying that she had been shopping in Topeka, Kansas, went into labor, and gave birth. to her baby at a nearby birthing center. She was picked up by Kevin and his two children, both high school age at the time, in the parking lot of a long John Silver's.

Lisa named Bobby Joe's baby Abigail. According to his statement to police, Kevin legitimately believed that Lisa gave birth. An Amber Alert was requested but denied, because it was never intended to be used in the case of an unborn baby due to no obtainable description of the victim. Eventually, Missouri congressman Sam Graves intervened in the Amber Alert was issued. Forensic computer investigators found details of a meeting in Bobby Joe's email that was supposed to take place between her and one Darlene Fisher on the day of the murder. The messages sent from the email address, Fisher 4Kids at Hotmail.com, were tracked to a dial-up internet connection in Melbourne, Kansas, where Kevin and Lisa Montgomery lives.

The next day, December 17, 2004, Lisa Montgomery was arrested at her dilapidated farmhouse in Melvern. When FBI agents went to speak with Montgomery, they found her in the living room holding the baby and watching television with the Amber Alert flashing on the screen. The baby was rescued and placed in the custody of a rightful father after DNA testing was used to confirm her identity. It was speculated that Montgomery's motivation stemmed from a miscarriage she may have suffered and subsequently concealed from her family. We will talk more about that later. Yes. However, Montgomery's former husband has since told authorities that she had a tubal ligation in 1990 and that she had a history of falsely telling acquaintances that she was pregnant.

Again, we will get into that later. So with this in mind, it is strange to think that Kevin was overjoyed at the alleged birth of his daughter, Abigail, and that no red flags were raised and that he legitimately believed Elisa's story. So I have not heard of birthing centers. I haven't. What this sounds to me is she's explaining something that sounds like a CVS minute clinic. You cannot just go into a place, have a baby, and leave an hour later. That just does not happen.

They would bring you to a hospital. It's rare to be out the same day, too. I don't think you can. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Obviously, I'm not a mother, but I have not heard of that. I believe you'd have to stay overnight. Would I be surprised if somebody gave birth in the early hours of the mom? morning and then left later at night. I'm sure that could be possible, but I'm pretty sure you need

to be observed for 24 hours. At least the baby, I believe, needs to be observed. Yeah, exactly. So this just seems strange. I would just think for your average person, this would raise some red flags. So also the fact that Lisa didn't appear pregnant. We'll get into this about her faking pregnancies later on, but there's not any hard evidence or accounts of her physically looking pregnant or not. So I guess we really can't say either way. It just seems strange to me that your spouse, whom you're with every single day, and probably sees you in various states of dress and undress, wouldn't be able to know that you had a pregnant belly. I agree with you in slight defense of her husband. They were on the precipice of divorce.

He had the papers signed already. But if they were on the precipice of divorce, why are they still having intercourse? Because they would have if he thinks that he's bothering a child. I mean, maybe they haven't in the past six months. I don't know. I'm just conjecturing here. It just seems strange to me and I'm just

kind of trying to reach to all different areas, I guess. This is the problem with this case is that there's gaps missing and some very key information. And I understand some people will carry a baby to determine nobody ever knows. When I was in high school, my freshman year, a sophomore girl gave birth, or really her water broke in the middle of math class. And nobody knew she was pregnant. Nobody knew. And then I had worked

with a woman many, many years ago. We thought she was just putting weight on. She thought she was just putting weight on. She had her period the entirety of her pregnancy and didn't know until she went to labor. Yeah. I had a friend that had a very irregular period, almost never had it, and didn't know she was pregnant until she felt the baby kick at around like seven months. So these things do you have happen. It's just, it's very irregular. So it is alleged that Lisa Montgomery would post on several internet message boards claiming that she was expecting,

often lining her fictitious pregnancy up with others also posting their pregnancies on the same message boards, which sadly was the case with Bobby Joe Stinnett. After she pinpointed her potential target, Montgomery would allegedly spark up conversation and attempt to

make a connection. So there's these message boards have since been purged. I found links, it was like an MSN message board. But when I click on it, it just redirects to MSN.com. All these things have been purged. There's no real record of this anymore. A lot of stuff has been swallowed up by the internet, unfortunately.

A common misconception is that Bobby Joe Stinnett and Lisa Montgomery did not know each other, but they did. And according to this woman that runs a blog named Pat Fish, there are several photos that existed of Lisa Montgomery and Bobby Joe Stinnett. They most have been deleted. but only one is still on the internet and we'll put it up on YouTube. But they're holding rat terriers and standing together in a group. And other people have claimed that they did know each other up until this point.

It's just unfortunate that a lot of information in this case probably was available a couple decades ago, but isn't there now. Lisa had initially claimed that she was expecting twins. However, she later posted that one of her twins had died. It is theorized that Lisa planned her fictional twin birth in the event that Bobby Joe Stinnett would also be carrying twins. When Bobby Joe announced that she was carrying a singular baby girl, Lisa conveniently announced that one of her twins had died. I've never heard of one twin dying that early and the other one living. I mean, I've heard of one being born stillbirth and the other being born live at the same time. But I haven't heard of you lose one of the twins.

ahead of time and the body rejects it but the other baby stays. If anyone knows anything about that, because this is not an area of expertise for me, like, please leave us a comment or send us an email. So I do know in occasion where one twin dies and I don't know where along it is in the gestational period. Sometimes the surviving twin will end up with cerebral palsy. I do know someone where that did occur. So there's all sorts of different things with this. I don't know if what Lisa was claiming even make sense medically? Yeah, I'm not sure. Or would they just lose both in utero early on? So Lisa Montgomery allegedly faked several other pregnancies.

Once claiming a miscarriage, another time of stillbirth. If this is true, these may have been prior parallel pregnancies Lisa was conducting with other potential victims, which then had to end when opportunities failed to arise. So what do I mean by opportunities? Well, let me explain further. On one rather chilling occasion, Lisa allegedly showed up at her cousin Wendy's home. Wendy was eight months pregnant and this unexpected visit was reported to have occurred during one of Lisa's parallel and faked pregnancies. It's theorized in hindsight that this pregnant

cousin was a possible victim of Lisa's that could not be carried out to fruition. There's not detailed information on what exactly happened during this visit with Wendy, but this isn't the only time something like this had happened and somebody left a comment. This is an anonymous comment. This blog post, the Pat Fish blog spot, this was written in 2004. This was right when news of this case broke out. And the third comment in, which was put on December 28th, 2004, it's quite long, but she claimed that she was another person that she was convinced Lisa had her eye on. She's also a rat terrier enthusiast, and she spent a lot of time on the rat terrier boards along with people like Lisa, Bobby, and Jason. And she got to know all these people, including Lisa. In April

2004, she announced her first pregnancy to acquaintances on the board when Lisa told her that she was also pregnant and said, I got you beat, meaning she was apparently due a week or two ahead of her. And then soon after, she let her know that she was knitting her a baby blanket. And at the time, she thought this was an extremely kind gesture from somebody that she barely knew, but also thought it was a tad strange. But now she thinks that she had her eye on this person. So in June 2004, this is a number of person says that she unfortunately miscarried what would have been her first child and is convinced now that she was probably at least one of Lisa's choices if not her first since supposedly they were due so close to one another I quote I believe she told me she was due on December 12th so this is

something she had planned to a tea I was devastated at losing our baby at 14 weeks to miscarriage but my pain is nothing compared to the catastrophic pain that Zeb Victoria Kevin and Lisa's children and family have endured. And this is the only account I have read on the internet of somebody experiencing this type of encounter with Lisa Montgomery. Everything else is through third party sources. And there's a lot of things that are alleged. And again, we'll be getting to some stuff later that unfortunately, all we can say is these

claims are alleged because just people can't back it up. So this is one of those claims. So even more horrifying, are the rules? rumors surrounding the disappearance of some of Lisa Montgomery's prize dams from the rat terrier show scene and a dam is a female breeding dog. It has been alleged by one source, this Pat Fish who has her blog, in 2004, that Lisa had a number of what's called oops letters, which is slaying in dog breeding circles for an unplanned litter of puppies. It is rumored that some of Montgomery's dogs had died after she practiced at-home cesarean sections on them, which in theory gave her

some of the skills needed to extract a living fetus from the womb of an unwilling mother. And let's be clear, this is the only source I could find this, but apparently a lot of people did not have a lot of direct interaction with Lisa Montgomery to know this or not. This is the only time I've seen this. So we don't know if this is true. If it is true, this is a very good sign to me, that what she was doing was premeditated, if it is true. And not just this, but these other encounters with her cousin, these people on the message boards where she's lining up pregnancies and things like that. Now keep that hypothesis in mind when we go into this next part.

So Montgomery was charged with a federal offense of kidnapping resulting in death. If convicted, she faced a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty. At a pre-trial hearing, a neuropsychologist testified that head injuries, which Montgomery had sustained some years before, could have damaged the part of her brain that controls aggression. During her trial in federal court, her defense attorneys asserted that she had pseudosciesis. I've also heard it called pseudosciasis. This is a very rare mental condition that causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy. Her attorneys, however, did not pursue this line of defense initially, and a lot of people don't know this, but the defense of Lisa Montgomery was that Bobby Joe Stinnett was murdered by Montgomery's half-brother Tommy, who had an alibi at the time. And a week before, a week before the trial, they tried to switch it to an insanity plea.

Because of this and because of trying to throw Tommy under the bus, all of Montgomery's family refused to cooperate with the defense. So doctors gave expert testimony that Montgomery had pseudosiasis in addition to depression, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. They also testified that Montgomery's stories about her actions fluctuated because her delusional state fluctuated and that she was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of her acts. both federal prosecutors and the opposing expert witness forensic psychiatrists strongly disagreed with this diagnosis. In defense of this, it's not uncommon for the prosecutors, psychiatrists, and the defense is psychiatrist or psychologist or any mental health professional offering their thoughts on this to be disagreeing with each other and disagreeing in major ways. This is just the courtroom for you. On October 22nd, 2007, jurors found Montgomery guilty, rejecting the defense claim that Montgomery was delusional. On October 26, the jury recommended a death sentence.

On April 4, 2008, a judge upheld the jury's recommendation for death. Experts who examined Montgomery after conviction concluded that by the time of her crime, she'd been living with psychosis, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. She was said to be often disassociated from reality and to have permanent brain damage from numerous beatings at the hands of her parents and spouses. So this next part, we want to preface that this is pretty graphic. It covers topics of abuse. I also want to say that we've looked into this in depth, and we cannot get any confirmation on these claims other than from Lisa Montgomery herself and her defense team.

A lot of people don't mention Lisa. alleged history of abuse because they firmly believe that it is all fabricated to try to get the insanity plea. But it's a part of this case nonetheless and it should be mentioned. So something was just brought to our attention. We are putting this piece in after recording. So we had a article sent to us. It's from L Magazine. And it was released on the 13th the day Lisa was executed. And to my knowledge, this is the only time that a member of Lisa's family has spoken to the media about the abuse she may have suffered. So this is her half-sister Diane Maddenly, and she was adopted and taken away from her abusive stepmother. So she didn't get to see in length what happened to Lisa.

Most of this was told to her through Lisa's defense attorney. but she is able to share what happened to herself. I think in sharing that, it definitely makes it very likely that similar, if not the same thing or worse, happened to Lisa. So Diane states, quote, as we got older,

Judy became abusive. Judy is her stepmother. I continue. Hitting us with brooms and belts and whatever else she got her hands on. I stepped in to take the brunt of it. She would poke her finger into my chest over and over in the same spot until it bruised.

She forced me to eat raw onions until I cried. She would beat us and scream. Worse than that was Judy's ability to find out what hurt you the most and use it against you. For me, it was the fear of abandonment. When I was six, Judy ordered me to strip down naked, leave the house, and never come back. I waited outside in the freezing cold before she finally opened the door to let me back in. I can't tell you if it was five minutes, ten minutes, 30 minutes, but I was out there alone and so scared. Protecting Lisa became my sole purpose in life.

I shielded her from the random babysitters, often older men, Judy left us with for her near-nightly outings to the bar. When one of them came into our bedroom and raped me, I prayed Lisa would be safe from him. Periodically, Judy would drop me off at a friend's house for weeks. When I turned seven, I stayed with another family for nine months. The day I came back, Lisa ran to me with open arms like had just returned home from the war. She had endured unimaginable abuses in my absence. When Child Protective Services picked me up six months later, she was. suffer even worse. So that's really her extent of this. She actually did not see Lisa again until a lawyer called her in 2006 out of the blue asking if she was Lisa's sister. And she was overjoyed.

She's like, how is Lisa? I want to see her. But the lawyer said, well, you can't because she's accused of murder. So they had not seen each other since then. When she was adopted, that was the last time. People who say that Lisa's claims of abuse either through her parents, step-parents, or former husbands cannot be confirmed. I think as far as her stepmother is concerned and the people acquainted with her stepmother, like the babysitters and stuff, I think you can very easily say that Lisa did endure the same abuse that Diane did as a child. So I felt that need to be put out there because there's a lot of people online that do not know about this or do not think that it's true, that it was all made up by the defense attorneys.

So with that, we continue. Allegedly, Lisa Montgomery's first sexual abuse occurred indirectly when she was three years old. She would lie in bed at night beside her half-sister Diane, while Diane, then eight years old, was being raped by their male babysitter. At the age of 11, Montgomery learned what it was like to be attacked herself. Her stepfather Jack was a mean drunk who regularly beat her and her mother and began raping her once or twice a week. The assaults became such an important part of Jack's life that over the next four years, that he built a room for Montgomery on the side of their trailer.

It had its own entrance so that he could come and go as he desired and nobody would know or hear her screams. He would rape and sodomize her, often with a pillow smothering her face. When she resisted, he slammed her head so hard against the concrete floor, that she suffered a traumatic brain injury, MRI brain scans would then later show. One day, her mother, Judy, happened to enter the room where the child was being assaulted by her husband. Judy was so enraged, she fetched a gun and held it to her daughter's head, screaming, how could you do this to me? Over time, these acts expanded. Montgomery's stepfather invited friends over to gang rape her in the room, ordeals that would last hours and end with the men

urinating on her. Lisa's mother also began selling Montgomery's body to the plumber and the electrician whenever she needed odd jobs done. She allegedly tried to escape this situation by marrying at the age of 18, but it is further alleged that both the first marriage and the second marriage resulted in further abuse. We were also unable to substantiate these claims. So the MRIs obviously do show brain damage. If you are a legal professional, I would like to hear your comments either in the YouTube comment section or email us misery machine podcast at gmail.com. I want to know how does brain damage and what must the extent of brain damage be in order for it to qualify you for insanity. And I get every case is different, but I feel as if in this case the brain scans might not be

enough. I've heard of countless cases where people with TBIs still are considered competent to stand for trial. Like Aaron Hernandez. Like Aaron Hernandez. His brain was Swiss cheese. It literally looked like Swiss cheese. I think this was after autopsy, but I think they might have MRI'd him beforehand. This has been a while since I've looked at this case. But they said his brain was the worst this doctor had ever seen like 30, 40 years. That was after they had donated his brain and they did an autopsy and went through it. And that's when they noticed how Swiss cheese it was. Yeah, I am personally somebody that's a big advocate for more studies for brain health and awareness for brain injury and brain damage in contact sports, especially combat sports, because quite often these athletes become forgotten and they suffer with these lifelong injuries.

and there's just no good resources for them. Veterans too. And I know we've been making strides within the past decade, but it's still not where it should be, in my opinion. So I will put that out there my feelings about TBI as TBI is a factor in this case 100%. Montgomery scheduled execution on December 8th, 2020 by lethal injection in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terrejo, Indiana, was delayed following her attorneys contracting COVID-19. On December 23, 2020, Montgomery was given a new execution date of January 12, 2021. In preparation, authorities transferred her from the federal women's prison in Texas where she had been held for more than a decade. The family of Bobby Joe Stinnett traveled to Indiana as well to witness Montgomery's death.

Late Monday night, a federal judge in Indiana blocked the execution to allow a hearing on whether Montgomery, now 52 years old, is too mentally ill to be executed. The Justice Department filed an appeal of that ruling with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, and the stay was vacated by the Supreme Court via a six to three vote. The execution was ordered to be carried out immediately. We are recording this on the 16th. This happened three days ago today. She was executed by lethal injection, January 13th, 2021 at Terre Haute, Indiana. She was pronounced dead at 131 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. When asked if she had any last words, she replied no.

She was the first female federal prisoner executed in 67 years, as well as the first woman executed in the United States since Kelly Gissendaner in 2015 and also the first person executed in the United States in 2021. Only three other women have been executed by the U.S. federal government. 1865 Mary Surrett by hanging. 1953, Ethel Rosenberg by Electric Chair. and also in 1953, Bonnie Heddy by Gas Chamber. So Bobby Jo and Zeb's daughter has grown into a healthy teenager.

She's 16 right now. She still lives in the Skidmore area with her family who do their best to protect her privacy. So I guess the only other thing that should be mentioned, there was a big uproar in the execution carried out, not just because people are anti-death penalty, but they truly felt that Lisa Montgomery just wasn't fit for execution. and their claims were what we covered earlier with the brain damage and the alleged abuse. But also, they really tried to express this point that she is not aware of what she was doing.

And when she said no during her execution, some people who were there said that she just looked like she was not in touch with reality. Other people alleged that she was on a high dose of antipsychotics, which could allege why she appeared. that way. Other people have said in the courtroom during her appeals that she had the same type of demeanor, but said at the time that she was on a high dose of antipsychotic. So I'm not sure if she was still on that at that period of time. There's just too much information missing, unfortunately. So what did you think? Do you think she deserved to receive the death penalty? Did you think she deserved life in prison? I see some people advocating that she should be released under supervision with time served or that she should be committed to a mental hospital for the rest of her life.

There's a lot of different opinions on this. I want to know what your thoughts on this. You can leave us a comment on Instagram if you're listening on the other platforms. If you're on YouTube, please leave us a comment, let us know what you think. All right. If you've made it this far and you're listening and you like this episode, please hit like and subscribe, hit that bell notification. We've had our videos in YouTube. One of them was shadow banned. I have proof of that others have been pushed down the algorithm lately. If you want to see us succeed, hitting like and subscribe is the best way that you can support us. And it doesn't cost you anything. But we do have some very wonderful people that went to that extra step to become our Patreon subscribers. So I'll say thank you to them. Yes. So thank you, Eddie, Rowan, Marky, Holly, Ashley, Vue, Anna, Lauren, Serena, Chloe, Mark, Tara, Sophie, Karen with an EA, Neil and Karen, Dave and Karina, Madison, Dom, and List, Jen, welcome Mo.

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